


Green Skies

by dirtyicicles



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Blood, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Self Harm, drabbles that hurt, implied suicide mention, more implied ignoct than anything really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-16 22:49:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9292967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtyicicles/pseuds/dirtyicicles
Summary: An ode to stress writing. I think I've tagged everything appropriately, but if I haven't, shoot me a quick message and I'll fix it!





	

**Author's Note:**

> An ode to stress writing. I think I've tagged everything appropriately, but if I haven't, shoot me a quick message and I'll fix it!

Noctis remembered the year it all started happening. It was a series of events, really, steps that all led in the direction of a cumulative end point that was unavoidable. It was a darkness unlike the one talked about in the Prophecy, one that clung to the backsides of his eyes and reminded him that it would always, _always_ be there. It was his new companion from a young age, that lashed out with claws aimed at his eyes and dragged them down until they were nothing more than gaunt hollows on features that were far too pretty and young to be looking like this. 

_Are you not getting enough sleep?_

_Are your studies becoming too much? We can always find you a tutor. I'm sure Ignis would be more than willing to help._

It's a conversation held every other week, one Noctis pushes to the side with a wave of his hand aimed at his vegetables. The peas scatter across the fine porcelain, and the familiar deja vu sets in around him like a blanket that's trying to suffocate him. At least the action drags a soft chuckle from his father's lips, after cotton mouthed reassurances and stubborn lines form around his lips. 

Because he _is_ fine, right? He moved out, and he's on his own with Ignis there to help him. Ignis, who is someone he can trust with his life and his work and responsibilities he's supposed to have on top of schoolwork and his studies. Ignis is the ray of sunlight to his darkened eyes that gives him the motivation to climb out of bed each day and attempt to make something of his life. Ignis is the one who showed his own concern over their dinner just two nights ago, noting that the bags underneath his eyes look darker than usual. 

Noctis shrugged his shoulders, and assured him it must have been the lighting. After all, why would the bags get heavier if all he does is sleep? Sleep is his constant companion with the beast that purrs inside of himself, and the two go hand in hand in a force assaulted on his own body that he can't fight back against. They drag him down with them at 6pm on a Saturday evening, curled up together on the couch as he covers his head to block out the last remaining remnants of sunlight that's left on that autumn day. 

But again, he's fine...right? The years drag on and the sleeping habits become a permanent fixture. Gladio gets pissed when he wants to stop sparring twenty minutes into their training. Ignis's brows furrow when he's falling asleep over the dining room table, book still open on the first page of the reading he needs to do. His own father, as nice as he tries to be about the situation, has irritation lacing every syllable of his soft voice over why Noctis can't miss some meeting or another just so he can nap in the foyer. 

Noctis lets the words roll off of him like oil against water. He didn't care then, and he doesn't care now. It's his life to do with as he pleases, and he knows everyone else knows this. They do, and what he fails to miss is their increasing frustration over why he'd rather sit in bed with twenty takeout boxes cuddled against him, while the sun's shining on his television screen as he watches the same program again, and then once more when it comes on again around midnight. 

Prompto joins in on the fun occasionally. Prompto's the only reason Noctis pushed so hard to move out, since he couldn't enter the previous premises to visit Noctis. It was cathartic, especially considering when Prompto understood. Most days they played video games together, huddled down into the couch with bags of junk food at their feet, the crumbs tumbling against the blankets they have pulled over themselves because they're too preoccupied to get up and turn the heating on. Sometimes they do nothing in particular, sitting together in the same room while they have their noses buried in their phones. Sometimes he's there for schoolwork, because they have to face the reality together that they're both failing their math class, and they really, _really_ need Ignis's help. 

It's an unending cycle that Noctis had grown used to. Barely dragging himself out of bed for school, and feeling guilty when he puts his freshly laundered clothes on a body he hasn't showered in about four days. Ignis stares at him from the corner of his eye as he leaves, the layer of cologne clinging to Noctis's skin unable to fool even his nose. Gods bless Ignis, though. That cycle continues when Noctis gets home, when he just drops his bag at the door and makes a beeline for the couch for the nap he knows he damn well deserves. 

Ignis always catches him before he can reach his final goal, though, offering him something he made during the day because he knows Noctis didn't eat his lunch again. He sits Noctis down at the table, fetches his bag and walks him through his homework. This is an addition to the cycle that Noctis glossed over, really. He knew Ignis could be annoyed with him at times, but he was always there to help and make sure he ate something. Motivation came from Ignis in strange forms of endearment, to losing each other in rough sex and just simply showering together to get the chore out of the way. 

Noctis isn't proud of it, but he falls asleep on Ignis in the shower. Quite often. 

Either way, it's a soft spoken form of support that Noctis has grown to depend on. Ignis loves him, even if some days Noctis doubts it. Noctis doubts a lot of things in this day and age, and it's something that's clawed its way to the surface and has started rearing its ugly head. No one wants him to be this cynical. No one wants him to be this stubborn, and no one wants to deal with the attitude he can wave around like the country's flag in the air. No one wants any of these things, but yet they keep their mouths shut. Frustration only comes out in the forms of arguments and yelling, when Noctis tries to snap another bridge in half like a match after he's just lit it on fire. Words are spoken, ones that each party regrets, but never really reflect upon unless it's brought up again. 

It never usually is. Noctis finds it too awkward to talk about, too shameful to try and weave into a coherent conversation where it can make sense and be resolved. He's young, only eighteen, but he's at the age where he should be keeping himself in check. He's all too aware of this as he stands out on the balcony, his gaze cast to the darkening skyline of Imsonia as he wishes he were anywhere but there. 

And the tears begin to choke him, because...why? He likes his life here, even if he sleeps most of it away. He has Ignis there to help take care of him, with his ever vigilant duties in cleaning and baking to make sure Noctis has a good treat to come home to when he's had a long day. It may never be quite the same as the dessert Noctis had when he was younger, but he would be damned if what Ignis came up with in the meantime wasn't fantastic. Everything Ignis did was wonderful, really, and yet... 

Noctis still has the gall to feel like he doesn't belong. To feel like he does belong, but to feel like a ghost in his own home as he wanders the hallway between the living room and his bedroom and back again. He hates that he wants to leave. He hates that he can't just think normally. He hates the way his words falter in his mouth when Ignis returns the _did you have a good day?_

All Noctis can offer is just a noise from the back of his throat, a lowered gaze to the floor as he realizes it's Sunday, and he thought it was Friday, and that he should have at least gone out shopping for groceries. Ignis always went by himself these days, without noise or complaint. When Ignis walks through the door, Noctis's heart sinks into his stomach. Sometimes he hugs Ignis, standing with him at the threshold for a good fifteen minutes; sometimes he just wanders back off to the bedroom, switching the television on while he waits for the other to come join him in bed. 

Ignis suggested finding help for It. _It._ Neither of them quite had a word for it, so Noctis just always referred to it as his It. It'd taken him a long time to finally open up about It, and when he had, it'd been in quiet and hushed fragmented sentences when Ignis found him in the bathroom one night. Noctis had been selfish and grabbed the sharpest thing he could get his hands on; in this case, it was the dagger he'd been gifted from Ignis. Gleaming mythril from Tenebrae, the moon etched into the blade's surface, right above a beautifully carved hilt. Gazing down at its polished surface both filled his lungs with guilt and comforted his fluttering heart. 

He's done this before. He just hasn't done it with something so sharp, so volatile. The edge of the blade reacts to Noctis's desperation and cuts a little too deeply, drags a little too far out against his pale skin. He gasps as red blossoms out from the line and splashes onto the white porcelain of the sink, painting the surface in the mistake he's just performed. It flows all too quickly and yet not fast enough, and Noctis can't really think straight because the vodka from earlier is doing its job in numbing how he feels about the situation. 

That's a night he can't remember too much about. He knows he kept going, and he knows Ignis eventually found him huddled in the corner, the lights off with his head buried into his arms in _shame._ Shame was a strong emotion, along with humiliation, guilt. Every time someone had asked him where he'd gotten those pills from that night plucked each chord in his heart harder and harder, until he felt he was ready to break. All of it swirled in his chest like an unpleasant disease, like he'd gotten pneumonia and started drowning in the fountains in his childhood home. His nightmares were centerpieces of the heart that wouldn't go away during those weeks in the hospital, and he tried to run from it all as hard and fast as he could. 

He'd wandered the hallways at night, fingernails dragging against the walls as he fought and searched for a way out. It didn't come. Not until his little carbuncle made a reappearance in his life again. 

His father had left the old figure on the bedside stand one day while he'd been sleeping his time away. The sleeping pills were meant to regulate his schedule on something that was more sane than knocking out at 4pm and waking up at 3am, but he'd managed to sneak another to keep the daylight away from his sore, hurting eyes. They were tired eyes he desperately kept shut, to keep the images of his father's concerned looks and his friend's worried expressions at bay. 

They all felt bad. Noctis felt bad. It wasn't their fault, and it never had been. 

The carbuncle was a promise. It'd been a promise he'd made that day when it first appeared to him. If the carbuncle thought he deserved help, then he would take it. The last few days in that ward were spent curled around Ignis, sobbing out apologies in the darkness of the room and keeping the one he loved awake. Ignis never complained, his tone soothing and soft and his touch gentle as it worked its way through sweat mangled hair that hadn't been washed in weeks. Noctis was a mess he was sure Ignis would throw out at some point with the rest of the trash, but he never did. And he never would. 

Ignis stayed with Noctis more often than not. Ignis made sure he managed to pass his classes and graduate, and together they found the help Noctis so desperately tried to fight. It took time and it took patience, and it took reconciling and it took spending time with the ones he loved to feel slightly normal again. The beast inside had been his companion for so long, that it was hard to look at anything else past it without it needing some kind of written permission. 

He remembered the sky was tinged green when he noticed things weren't quite as bad. It had been raining, and he'd been curled up on the couch, his head resting upon Ignis's lap while he read some report or another to him. Noctis had listened and managed to retain the information against the din of the television, his eyelids not alike the heavy, grating cinder blocks they usually were against his eyes. The beast still sat with him, claws curling into the skin upon his chest and clenching hard. It was a constant reminder of what was, what could be, and what _should_ be. 

But when he looked into Ignis's eyes, though, it was a little easier to ignore it. 


End file.
